Everyone just hates fat people

[mamabeeboo]

Yes I'm fat and yes I'm taking the WLI.

I've had it out with a friend of a friend during a catch up dinner yesterday and I'm fuming.

I've lost some weight and still have a good 5 or so stone more to go before I'm anywhere near the 'normal' BMI category. So no, I'm not wasting away or disappearing, or losing weight too fast.

The mistake I made was being honest about the jabs. But I stand by it, I think it's important to get healthy, regardless of how you do it, just get there.

ANYWAY, this person has suddenly decided to feel concerned for my health, now that the loss has become noticeable. With some silent nods from others about how you should 'just eat less and move more'. No shit is that what was supposed to do?!

A big discussion about:
just have willpower
just have smaller portions
do it the normal way, you don't know what you're putting into your body
it's not healthy
just put down the fork
it's about dicipline
it's not really losing weight though, is it (huhh??)
it's more rewarding to do it the normal way so you can feel achievement

It's gotten me thinking of how so many people just hate fat people. You want us to pay for being fat, to suffer at the gym doing workouts we don't like or can't do with joint pain and back pain etc. You want us to 'just have willpower' like it's that easy. You want us to try all the diets and fail so you can feel superior with your 'discipline' and that you 'look after your body'.

You hate the fact that these WLI have levelled the playing field.

I said all this yesterday and it became very frosty. These aren't my friends, I was there for the birthday girl, but I won't sit there and take it.

I'm posting because I'd love to hear what you might have heard when talking about WLI. (Or if anyone agrees with the above 🤔)

I see it totally different to you. For me losing weight was about making 100+ small changes to my lifestyle and diet. None were easy but all helped me change my outlook on life and food, I lost 5 stone. I still struggle every day but maintain most of those changes daily.

My issue with WLI is what happens at the end? Do you need to take them for life or will you then need to make the 100+ sacrifices I had to? Is this what your friends were getting at? Simply that when you stop the WLI what will change?

Good luck to you.

Well done for speaking up OP. I haven’t told anyone apart from DH and DC, partly because I’ve already had enough arguments for one lifetime, but I agree with you that it’s good if people do feel able to be open about WLI use.

it's more rewarding to do it the normal way so you can feel achievement

Wtf is this attitude all about? I don’t want to feel achievement, I want to feel happy in my body and healthy. It’s not a hobby ffs.

I think it's unfortunate how the use of Ozempic started and I think this has stuck in people's minds. In the beginning it was celebrities buying Ozempic on the black market and diabetics not having access to the medicine they needed to survive basically. It was seen as a rich people cheating sick people out of essential medicine for vanity. Now I believe the producers have caught up and there isn't a shortage anymore and more and more regular people are using it and seeing great results, but first impressions matter and in this case it has made people very sceptical even though the situation is different now.

I’d just ask ‘cheating who?’

the person taking them doesn’t feel cheated. So who is being cheated?

Yes, do that. Because what the people who say this mean by cheating is that they had co-opted you into a competition without your consent, and in which they decided the rules that you've now broken. So probe them, walk them through that.

You can’t win, OP, so don’t even bother competing. Fat, people judge you. Lose weight, people judge you.

There’s a lot of bitterness and faux concern around weight loss methods. And a lot of people who like to give opinions without actually having any idea what they are talking about because they read something on the Daily Mail website. I think people just like to bring others down, I don’t know if this is a peculiarly British thing, but there does seem to be a culture of resenting people’s success sometimes. You see it a lot across all manner of things.

Ignore them, they are just trying to make you feel bad for what sounds like a sensible decision.

I have a lot of overweight friends and would fully support this route if that’s what they wanted. In fact I would wish some of my friends would do it as their health really worries me. I don’t want them to suffer.

People on WLI are also making the 100+ sacrifices you are making.
Why is this so hard to grasp?

For some of us, our hormones and blood sugar levels actively seek out food, it is overwhelming and overpowering.
All the WLI do is balance these hormones and blood sugar levels so we can make the 100+ sacrifices.
It is not easy.
It comes with nausea, diarrhoea, constipation and a myriad of other side effects.
We still want to eat.
We still need to use willpower.
We still need to eat less and move more.

But we have a tiny helping hand, which allows us to do what you can manage without help.

Hello! Congrats in making progress in your weightloss journey! I admit to raising these concerns with a friend when she first started, though I think a little more tactfully and kinder than your friends pile on, as my friend was kind in return and we discussed her hormonal reasons for struggling to loose weight (she had thyroid issues) and I learnt quite a bit from our conversation and agreed it made sense for her situation.

I've also recently read this fab article that delves deeper into the hormonal aspect of weightloss and admonishes the science community for theor general unwillingness to explore this dimension. Interestingly she describes how the injection kind of backs up the idea that hormones play a big part in whether you store or use fat. Worth a read if anyone's interested. It's certainly changed my thoughts on obesity and weight loss a fair bit. open.substack.com/pub/uncertaintyprinciples/p/why-do-we-lose-weight-on-glp-1-drugs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=593og

"My issue with WLI is what happens at the end? Do you need to take them for life or will you then need to make the 100+ sacrifices I had to? Is this what your friends were getting at? Simply that when you stop the WLI what will change?"

I find these sorts of comments to be the most trying to deal with and respond to. Apparently, we are not making any sacrifices, so we are doing it wrong and will inevitably fail and return to fat status promptly when we stop taking the medication.

Well, you don't have to stop taking Mounjaro if you don't want to and it's helping to maintain your weight, and you're not continuing to lose weight. There is nothing wrong with taking a medication long term for a long term issue, is there? Just like people take many other medications long term for other issues.

I could list the myriad ways my life has changed since being on Mounjaro for 10 months now. Probably 100+ little changes... It will be an ongoing task to maintain them when I am at my target weight, as with all weight loss approaches. I am looking forward to that challenge and am fully aware of it. Yet people always seem to think it's going to come as a surprise and result in instant weight regain.

We have a bingo card for that, OP

I've always been slim and don't have any negative issues with food and can quite easily stop when full. BUT I appreciate that's not the case for so many and really, if this helps people get to a healthy weight, I'm all for it. Although, there are more people in the UK overweight than a healthy weight, so we do have to accept not everyone will have a predisposition to over eat, gain weight etc. I suspect this is where some of the push back/negativity comes from; assuming people can do it through exercise and a healthy diet but choose not to.

You can be out and proud if you want but until it's normalised (like divorce, gay marriages, children out of wedlock) people will be openly judgemental about it. Nowt queerer than folk.

It will always carry a certain stigma (you can't control yourself, you're a bit lazy etc etc) so you need to accept that.

Personally, I was on ozempic and it made me sick as a dog. So much so that I couldn't finish the first month. But in that time I made the mistake of telling two women from school I had tried it but it didn't work. Now one of them, despite the fact I keep on telling her I'm not on it, every time I see her she asks about how the WLIs are going.

As a thin person who watches what I eat all the time and works out 5-6 times a week - yes, weight loss jabs do feel like cheating.
But if there was a way for me to cheat - I would!

I've not really made any sacrifices at all, other than the £150 a month which has been partially offset by spending less on food anyway. Side effects have been notably absent.

As neither I nor anyone else on WLI is proposing to forcibly jab people with it as they walk down the street, this has no impact at all on those who prefer the sacrifices method. They can fill their boots, as can those of us who wish to use WLIs.

I think @Mauro711 did a good analysis : "celebrities buying Ozempic on the black market and diabetics not having access to the medicine they needed"
This was why I was firmly against it in the beginning. Celebrities who wanted to look heroin chic took and still take the injections. I think it's dangerous for the message they're sending out to young people about what bodies should look like to be accepted. I do judge anyone taking injections in order to look like a corpse.

I don't judge anyone with a lot of weight to loose for using injections, especially now when there is no rivalry with the diabetics. And not "everyone" hate fat people. Only ignorant people hate fat people and you're better of without them.

This is so true isn’t it? There is something about earning a slim body and having the body you deserve. Surely we all deserve healthy bodies - but our modern way of life and the foods available to us make that really difficult. If only it was as easy as eating less, and moving more..

Well lucky for you there is!

Stop working out, start stuffing your face until you are obese then you can pay £150 per month for weight loss jobs and lose the weight again. Although you may get some side effects. You're welcome!

But all that’s done is make them think they’ve helped you! They probably genuinely think you’d never thought of that. Stupid response

But there are fat people who also watch what they eat and work out every day and still struggle because of hormonal issues and/or mental health.

Ugh. MN never fails to bring the moronic comments on this subject.

@HusbandrippedmeoffI beg your pardon? I’m obese after having prescribed steroids after cancer which unsurprisingly, caused me to gain a ton of weight! Nothing to do with “stuffing my face” ffs! Many, many cancer survivors are now heavily overweight due to prescribed steroids 🙄

lol @ Sharon Osborne

I don't discuss it with anyone. The medication I take for a clinical health condition is private and nobody's business but my own.

I'm fortunate to be surrounded by good people, who are genuinely happy for me that I am happier and healthier and don't pry any further. I'm shocked by the prying questions that other posters on this board report from their families and so-called friends. I have noticed some of the changes in the ways that other acquaintances and strangers have started to treat me as my 'skinny privilege' has returned. We have to remember that the diet culture which all of us have grown up in assigns a moral judgement to the sizes of people's bodies, especially women. Thinness is associated with discipline and self-control; fatness with laziness and greed. It's very, very unsettling for people who have never struggled with their weight to confront the reality that they aren't better than the rest of us after all!

Don’t speak to thin people about weight loss. They don’t get it.